No Alexis I'm Not....Neither Were You

I have several spiritual and recovery based readings that I start my day off with. One of the ones that I usually favor is Father Leo's Daily Meditation. I don't know if he's a Catholic, Anglican or what, and frankly, I don't care. I love that recovered alcoholic. He has some wisdom that I am grateful he shared with the rest of us. He usually has a quote at the start of his writing and then expounds on it. I love quotes to, so this is a good meditation for me.

But no daily meditation would be worth anything, whether it be Daily Bread, Upper Room, My Utmost For His Highest, Daily Reflections, 24 Hours A Day or any others, if I didn't actually meditate on what they're saying. I don't do daily readings to learn what I am supposed to think, but rather to give me a few options of topics to focus on as I start my day and see where the Spirit leads my mind and heart. And as much as I love Father Leo, in my opinion, he missed the mark with the one I read today, which is actually the entry for December 13. I missed a day a while back.

"Man can not remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor." ~Alexis Carrel

This is the quote that Father Leo used to expound on, and what he said was, in my opinion, good and right. He focused on the aspect of being grateful for his sufferings, because he learns from them and grows because of them. The Apostle Paul said similar things. I do not disagree.

But this blog is about my experience, strength and hope on whatever subject I feel lead to use as a topic, and while I do not disagree with Father Leo, and certainly not with the Apostle Paul, I greatly disagree with the spirit and philosophy of Alexis Carrel and therefore take issue with the quote used. Yes, I have both learned and grown from suffering. Suffering is one of the only ways that this stubborn man will find himself able to release his own will and check out how God may want things done. It's a sad but true fact. Knowing that I have pleased my Father is usually not as good a motivator as the misery I find myself in due to the law of cause and effect after walking in my own will. I pray that someday it will be the opposite.

Here's the issue. I'm a fairly intelligent man. I have a strong will in many ways. I know how to think, and I have read plenty of books on motivation, psychology, etc. And yet, I have never been able to change myself. I have caused my own suffering and grown and changed due to that suffering, but that is different. I did not do the changing, never on any long term basis anyway. Because I can't. In the words of the great philosopher Popeye, I ams what I ams and that's all that I ams. I can't be anything other than who I am. I've tried. I can fight against myself for a while. I can wear masks, pretend, and hide the truth for a while. But I have never been able to truly change anything about the nature of who I am, and I have never met anyone who could.

I am the marble, that much is true, but I am most certainly not the sculptor. Whenever I have tried to be I have only succeeded in failure, misery and making a mess. My Father, my Creator, God is the sculptor. There are several different scriptures in the Bible that specifically say that He is the potter and we are the clay to be molded and formed according to His will. Carrel believed that mankind could better itself by following the guidance of an elite group of intellectuals, and by implementing a regime of enforced eugenics. But even were he right, it is not the individual acting as sculptor but a select few exceptional individuals. And he was not right. The truth is that I have less chance of changing anyone else than I do of changing myself. I can take a man's life and end it, but I can never give him life. None can but the Creator.

So while I do want to be grateful for my sufferings, and I want to walk in what I have learned so that I do not need as much suffering to inspire positive change in the future, I do not ever want my pride to get in the way of my remembering who has done what I couldn't do in my life. I want to make sure to always give the glory and the honor to the One who deserves it. God performed a miracle in my life, and to quote Scrooge, "I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!...I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!” The spirit of Christmas that I keep in my heart is the constant reminder that God's greatest gift to me was Himself to make a way to have relationship with Him and to enable me to change from what I was destined to be in my own will to the man I could be in His, happy, joyous and free from a hopeless state of mind, body and soul, no longer enslaved by drugs and alcohol and daily dancing with death but rather making my own journey following yonder star to find freedom.

I am not the sculptor. I am the marble. I am not the potter. I am the clay. And I am not the composer, but like the little drummer boys before me I will play the Composer's music the best I can in gratitude and thanksgiving for the song He has placed in my heart.